Oliver’s Camp

Oliver’s offers 10 tented suites, which have been spread out for maximum peace and privacy, artfully furnished and decorated with handcrafted timber furniture. Each tent comes with its own en suite bathroom and additional outdoor shower and with ample decking, perfect for enjoying the camp’s great views. Rooms can be arranged as doubles, twins or triples, and one tent has been specially designed for families with an extension fitting 2 extra beds.

All meals are prepared at the camp and ingredients are sourced locally from Arusha. For breakfast, enjoy a continental range of fresh fruit, cereals, freshly baked goods or a hot cooked meal of eggs, sausages, bacon, toast etc. along with tea, coffee and juices. You can also have your breakfasts packed up to take with you on an early morning game drive. Lunches can also be eaten out as picnics for all-day game drives. Lunches usually offer a selection of lighter dishes served with salads and breads. Dinners are a little more formal, serving three-course meals at the communal table under the stars after a drink around the campfire.

Witness the wonders of the Tanzanian wilds from an open-sided, photography-optimised safari car. Game drives like to make the most of the cool early mornings and evenings when the wilderness is at its most active, stirring first thing and after the day’s heat has subsided. For a fully rounded safari experience, night-time drives are also available. The vehicles have been fitted with powerful spotlights so you won’t miss a thing!

Leave the cars behind and stretch your legs with one of the camp’s expert guides and naturalists. Walking the same ground as the animals of the Tarangire takes safari to a far more intimate level. There are some things that you simply can’t appreciate while on a game drive, so once you slow down your eyes will be opened to all these new things you hadn’t noticed before. Only by getting up close are you able to fully appreciate the role of every little piece of the ecosystem.

Start your day on a high as dawn breaks across the plains. Glide silently over the Tarangire and take in the beautiful scenery and undisturbed wildlife below. Guests often find themselves struck by the serene silence and stillness, the perfect setting to take in the wildlife from above without any interference

Asilia understands that nature and humans are inseparable partners. They endeavour to support local areas, projects and communities through revenue and awareness created through tourism. Every year Asilia releases a report on the Positive Impact projects to show how these efforts have come to fruition and made real changes. Over 2018 and 2019, Positive Impact made contributions to:

• Offsetting 1,505 tonnes of CO2
• 44 scholarships
• Chimpanzee Habitation protection
• Community and Conservation projects
• Training local staff
• Developing economies

Asilia’s Twende Porini programme welcomes children from local communities so they can get a taste of what a safari is all about and learn the importance of conserving natural environments and wildlife. Most of the children live near conservation areas but don’t fully understand why tourists travel from all over the world to see the animals that they see practically daily.

Safari favourites such as lions, buffalo and elephants can actually be very serious threats to local villages. By taking children on safari they get to see the animals in their natural state and can learn the importance of each animal in the ecosystem.

The population of lions in Africa has decreased by around 50% in the last 25 years as a result of factors like human-lion conflict, bushmeat poaching, and habitat loss. The Lion-scape Coalition was formed in 2019 by the Lion Recovery Fund (LRF) for the benefit of lion populations and local businesses.

Through the initiative, Africa’s top tourism operators can take a more active role ‘to support on-the-ground conservation work and encourage clients to support the future of lions’. The goal of the Lion-scape Coalition is not only to protect lion populations but to also raise awareness of the role lions play in ecosystems and the suffering they’ve experienced as a species.

In 2010, the Serengeti Lion Project (SLP) expanded from the south-eastern Serengeti to work on lion conservation in the parts of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) inhabited by Maasai people. Coexistence has often been difficult as lions will disturb and attack Maasai herds, and the Maasai will retaliate by killing lions. Growth in human populations has also created a barrier for the lions in the area, meaning that they have become isolated and increasingly inbred.

The NCA hopes to foster coexistence between lion and human populations and to help enable this they have launched a large water project. Competition over water sources is often what brings herds and wild animals into close contact and creates conflict. By removing this competition, therefore, human-wildlife conflict will be reduced.

Due to the loss of natural habitats and other factors, population of lions have been declining and remain under threat. The Tarangire Lion Project (TLP) has been working to monitor lion prides, mitigate human-wildlife conflict, and to educate and raise awareness about lion conservation among local communities.

Asilia supports the TLP, helping to provide equipment for tracking and monitoring lions, staff operations and training. By keeping track of the lion prides the TLP can implement the most effective conservation strategies, especially in the long-term. They are also working with local communities to set up predator-proof bomas so that livestock herds are protected and there is much less retaliation against lion populations.

The grasslands of the Maasai Steppe’s Simanjiro Plains, on the outskirts of the Tarangire National Park, are crucial grazing areas for both wildlife and for the cattle herds belonging to the local Maasai. Factors such as hunting, farming and human population growth have infringed on the balance of grassland available for both pastoral herds and wildlife.

In 2004, a group of tourist operators with concerns for the integrity of the ecosystem enlisted the help of the Ujamaa Community Resource Team (UCRT) to help them engage with Simanjiro villages. The easements resulted from several agreements to keep large parts of land un-farmed so that there are areas where wildlife can graze safely and undisturbed.

The Southern Tanzania Elephant Project (STEP) is an elephant conservation programme that aims to conserve elephant populations and habitats, and to enhance human-elephant coexistence. Their 3 main initiatives are:

• Monitoring and research – mapping elephant distributions and trends, expanding elephant databases and evaluating effects of poaching to inform management and policy decisions
• Protection – defending elephants against ivory poaching through aerial surveillance, ranger patrols and law enforcement
• Human-elephant coexistence – working with farmers/landowners to reduce damage done by elephants, helping to diversify livelihoods not dependent on farming, working with local authorities to show what drives human-elephant conflict and help resolve it, and helping facilitate safe elephant migration routes

Established over 30 years ago by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), this project monitors ant changes in the birth and survival rates of cheetahs. With approximately 210 cheetahs in the ecosystem, the research done ‘provides invaluable insight into the challenges facing cheetah’ populations and makes huge contributions to planning out conservation strategies that will benefit them. Pictures of cheetahs taken by guests staying at one of Asilia’s camps can directly help the project because it helps them keep track of cheetahs in the area.

The Honeyguide Foundation is committed to empowering local communities so they can shape their futures and runs ‘community-based conservation initiatives across nearly 1.2 million acres of wilderness in Tanzania’. These initiatives have 5 key areas – enterprise development, management and governance, communications, human-wildlife conflict mitigation, and wildlife and habitat protection. Asilia supports 2 of their projects, the K9 Unit and the Chimpanzee Habituation Project.

Honeyguide established the K9 Unit in October 2011 to provide operational assistance to anti-poaching teams and in every area where dogs were used elephant poaching decreased dramatically. A K9 Unit was allocated to the Kilimanjaro region and within 2 years, all elephant poaching ceased. The Chimpanzee Habituation Project was first created by Professor Bernhard Grzimek of the Frankfurt Zoological Society, who released rescued chimpanzees onto Rubondo Island. The project hopes to introduce the chimpanzees to a human presence in a non-threatening way as they are fully habituated into the area.

Each year, Asilia identifies students who have incredible potential but whose families would not be able to afford supporting them through higher education and provides them with funding for a scholarship. Assistance is given for courses that fall under tourism and teacher-training, and job opportunities are provided on completion of study.

Oliver’s is powered in part by solar energy. This has a really beneficial impact on the environment because solar energy is the most efficient renewable energy source, reduces air pollution in replacing fossil fuels and it doesn’t require water to make energy.